I stumbled across this over the weekend: codeyear.com/
"Make your New Year's resolution learning to code.
Sign up on Code Year to get a new interactive programming lesson sent to you each week and you'll be building apps and web sites before you know it."
What do you think? The first email is due to be sent on Monday 9th January.
|
>> What do you think? The first email is due to be sent on Monday 9th
>> January.
I'm curious and have signed up. I code for a living, but not 'apps' or web sites - might learn some new skills, if I can be bothered.
You could probably find the same information now if you look hard enough, but I guess regular lessons will probably work better.
Cheers Dave.
|
Clicked on the "Can't wait start now" link. First lesson completed and I've earned one new badge :)
Do you know if it's going to be just one language (Java?) or a mixture?
|
|
Ah - lesson 2 starts off by telling you you're learning JavaScript.
|
Just went back and finished the 'course', so now I'm going to start "building apps and web sites".
Unfortunately the only app it has taught me how to write is making a number count up or down. Web sites? Hmm...
There are other courses you can take on the website eg. JavaScript Quick Start Guide, but "this course assumes basic knowledge of at least one other programming language. This is more than is covered in 'Getting Started with Programming'".
The most useful is probably 'FizzBuzz', which teaches you how to code a program which prints numbers between 1 and 20, unless the number is divisible by 3 when it prints 'Fizz', or 5 - 'Buzz', or both - 'FizzBuzz'. But that's really only checking you've understood the first lesson.
Perhaps they're going to be adding more courses? If not, it's a very limited introduction to programming which doesn't live up to the wild promises quoted in the OP, and you'll need to look elsewhere to go any further.
|
Hmmmm. Just completed this through to lesson 8 and I'm as clue-less about writing javaScript as when I started lesson 1.
I write html and css but not proper if this variable is set to this then that happens type code. I can understand roughly what's going on in the jQuery I put in from libraries but I can't create brand new bits of it myself and I've been meaning to start learning it properly for ages and thought I'd start with javascript so this course looked good but so far I'm as clueless as ever even though I've set some variables and even set an array and done a bit of while, doing and elsing.
I learnt html and css with a Lynda.com online course a few years ago which was brilliant. Thinking I should do the same for javascript and jQuery.
|
Not that bothered about learning it but I suspect one of the other courses on the web thrown up by google might be better eg.
www.w3schools.com/js/
(not tried it).
Or maybe even one of those old fashioned book things? :)
|
>> Not that bothered about learning it
...or rather re-learning it - did actually do some at NEC about 10 years ago IIRC. They were using it in some GSM phone testing software which I worked on for a bit - no web stuff.
|
At a loose end late last year I thought I might look at Android development. Or start looking at it.
It did some of the first exercises and it was fine. And then the next one just assumed a lot more than the first ones had taught you.
I still will do this (or iOS or both)... I just need to find the time.
|
I have forgotten most of my coding skills. I do try and write my own programs for my job though, currently writing a simple backup program for my old customers which will simply copy all their data to an external drive with one click.
I do really want to get into Android development, was excited about that when I got my Galaxy in October 2010. Maybe I will start by writing an Eddie tracker.
Coding is really good fun, I used to get laughed at a kid when I would write basic games in Blitzbasic as a teenager and my peak I was invited to a software publishing companies HQ all expenses paid.
Then I went to university which involved a lot of programming and that look the fun out of it, and since graduating in 2005 not done much other than websites and AutoIT which I use for my business.
I know when I was in my early secondary school years I was the only one in the class which could switch on a BBC and make it do stuff without having load a floppy disk.
If the nation does get into coding then I will love it, as this is just another area I could offer my support services in.
My favourite language is C#.net, its just a damn shame its a Microsoft platform and I can't use it much as the exes are too bloaty My apps need to be portable hence using AutoIT and raw C.
Last edited by: RattleandSmoke on Thu 12 Jan 12 at 00:04
|
>>I have forgotten most of my coding skills.
>>
I started coding in the late 1960s. We realtime coders were looked on as the elite as there were so few non batch machines in the country and of course few knew what we did for a living. It was a fantastic part of my life.
I think I will give re learning a miss.
What has never left me is the disiplines that came with designing and testing programs.
I insisted that both my offspring learned to code using the BBC model B and they enjoyed it.
I had paid extra for the version of 14" Sony TV that had a SCART socket so an RGB connection was available thus freeing our main TV which had a DIN socket for RGB.
How things have moved on.
|
>> I insisted that both my offspring learned to code using the BBC model B and
>> they enjoyed it.
Wish you'd been my Dad. I was desperate for a Commodore 64 but my parents were having none of it and thought I'd 'waste' hours on it.
I did get a PC once I'd left home, got a modem, hooked up to some Bulletin Boards and taught myself html after someone approached me on the BBs to transform their print magazine into an online version for this new fangled World Wide Web. I couldn't afford the phone bill to even look at what it looked like online on my super fast 28.8k modem so it was all a bit of a guessing game. I took part in Fuse (a world wide typographic experiment) at the Royal College of Art where they had an ISDN connection which felt like magic. Not sure why but the ability to connect with electronics has always felt like magic and being able to create online is just amazing.
|
>> currently writing a simple backup program for my old customers which will simply copy all
>> their data to an external drive with one click.
I won't go into why I think simple backup solutions are better (i.e. file based) but do look at ROBOCOPY! With options of course.
I still am surprised what I could figure out and programme as a teenager and then later at Uni. I even had to create micro-code for one Uni project. Another was file transfer (including error correction) using Atari ST's serial MIDI interfaces.
But I did a GUI based (using mouse) graphic/text/hypertext type app when I was doing 'computing' back in 1997.... no optical mice then either :-)
|
When CSS3 first came out, I used to refer to w3schools regularly for syntax stuff. Smashing Magazine ( www.smashingmagazine.com ) is good too for learning lots about coding for the web, for apps etc and keeping up to date with everything.
I have a few of those old fashioned book things about and in fact on my desk here I have the Visual Quickstart Guide to JavaScript for the World Wide Web 3rd edition - probably a bit out of date. Dave (programmer here at Khoosys and Car4Play headquarters pulled it off the shelf as something which could be good for me). I really have no excuse really.
I even did one of those aptitude tests for programming last night and I don't even have the excuse now that my brain just doesn't work that way - lol. It's really just finding time. Even in my spare time at home, I'm designing sites for clients.
Maybe if I get one of those periods of 60 minutes or so where I've heard you can have some time away from your desk to eat things then I could do it then *looks about to see if Stephen is about to crack his whip at me and puts head down quickly* :D
link edited, the close bracket right at the end stopped it from working
Last edited by: VxFan on Thu 12 Jan 12 at 12:56
|
Learn to code this year - Focusless
